Category Archives: News

We’ve just released our first, ummm, well, anything in two years – and it’s a new r³ mix of always – a song that originally appeared on hey… that’s not a tootsie® roll… in 2009. You can listen to it or download it from Free Music Archive, or on Bandcamp. (And yes, we’ve finally enabled the “name your price” feature on Bandcamp many kind people asked us to put in place so they can support us directly. But remember: it’s still free. Hey – old habits die hard, y’know…)

This song carries a special meaning for us.

To be honest, always is pretty atypical of what we do: it’s quiet, spare, no weird instrumentation… and it’s the closest thing to a “love song” than we’ll ever record again.

It’s one of our oldest songs – our files show us working on it as early as November 2003…

… and it’s also the very last thing we were working on when Wendy suddenly lost control over her voice in late 2004, just before we moved to Mexico Beach.

Within a couple of months, she could barely swallow.

Six months later – after the first of two throat operations – we were told point-blank that she would never sing again.

And 4 years later, always was also the very first thing Wendy sang just to prove to herself that she WOULD sing again. (In fact, the vocal take used in this version is that take.)

In essence, this song changed everything about our musical direction – but to us, it was about something much bigger:

To us, it’s about Permanence. And Perseverance.

Whenever we hear it, it tells us to Never Give Up.

So… three weeks ago, out of the blue, in the midst of the intensifying maelstrom that’s been our life of late, we received a request for a high-quality (read AIF/WAV) version of always that could be used within a soundtrack.

The version on htnatr was a rushed mix – and we always thought we needed to go back & “do it right…”

… but we never did. (Life comes at you fast.)

We checked out that rushed 2009 mix – and even though we’re still manically fighting the total clusterfuck that has forced our current 3-year hiatus (more surgery while needing to move – we’ll post about this later), we immediately just dropped everything to go back & do this song justice: to finally “do it right.”

We realized we needed to do this – not just for a soundtrack, or to make it sound better, but to remember who we are and what we believe in.

We see so many people lately – so many of our friends – suffering through horrible personal battles while The Disaster Named 2017 continues to shit on us all.

And as wave after wave of horseshit falls on top of us all, it’s so damned tempting to just give up, just give in, just let these waves of hopelessness wash over us…

Don’t.

Don’t stop fighting the good fight.

Because those good things about being human – being humane – are still worth fighting for.

14 years after we first started on working on it, 12 years since Wendy was told she’d never sing again, 8 years since she proved everybody wrong & we released it – and after all of the many, many other battles we’ve dealt with just to survive & get to this moment…

We’re redoing the entire site – and anybody who knows us knows we suck at website building. We’re still adding stuff, figuring things out (especially for mobile) – so improvements are on the way. Stay tuned.

• We’ve spent the last three months or so writing a very long article for one of our favorite music sites: Aux.Out., the long-form arm of Consequence Of Sound. As usual, it’ll probably get us in lots of trouble. Bail money will be accepted. 😉

And yes, there are things missing – lots of things, actually – like whole albums & EP’s and whatnot.

That’s because we’re finally embarking on our long-promised Remake/Remix/Remodel effort – so we’ve pulled some of our back catalogue while we work on it, and will be posting remastered versions ASAP… plus there’ll be an all new 5 or 6-song EP of stuff we wanted to do over/do right, entitled beat it with a stick.

We figured this would be a good way to ease back into recording after the death march that last days, last days became – so once we’re done with this project, it’ll be time to do New Stuff. (Knock On Wood.)

• And for those who have asked, there are still a few limited-edition signed & numbered last days, last daysposters & CD’s available – and they’re basically free – so grab ’em while you can… ’cause we won’t be doing that again.

So, there you have it: new look, new writing, new stuff on the way.

So maybe we haven’t been slacking after all.

Hmmm.

We obviously need to add some slacking to our schedule.

We’ll work on that, too.

Thank you for being there for us – and always remember: You Matter To Us.